So you - and a lot of people judging from the comments - believe that it's perfectly legitimate to steal from someone who has ever, themselves, done anything in the past you consider wrong. That morality, ethics and laws should only protect the blameless, and everyone and everything else is fair game.
I have to admit I don't agree, I personally think the morality of a crime doesn't depend upon a value judgement of the of the victim. Theft is theft even if you steal from thieves, and two wrongs as they say don't make a right. But I suppose some people need to assume the victims of imperialism had it coming, but of course they themselves don't.
> believe that it's perfectly legitimate to steal from someone who has ever, themselves, done anything in the past you consider wrong.
That's not my point, no – if only because inter-personal relations are not and should not be handled like inter-state relations.
My point is that human history, especially in crucibles such as e.g. the Mediterranean is such a mess of victors turning to losers, conquerors to conquered, migrations, emigrations, remigrations, internal & external invasion, pillaging, destruction and so forth, that not only (i) the modern countries are all but representative of the people that inhabited them through History, (ii) so deeply intertwined, that trying to bring reparations is a lost cause from the very start.
Let us accept that the French should give back the obelisk: but then, to whom? To Turkey, the descendant country from the Ottoman Empire, who originally gifted it? To ethnic Mamluks, who controlled Egypt at the time as a client state of the Ottoman Empire? To Arabic people, ruled by Mamluks, who invaded Egypt before the Mamluks came into the picture? To Italian, Macedonians, or Greeks, that ruled over Egypt before that? Or should they launch some DNA sampling campaign to find what population in Norther Africa is the closest to the Ancient Egyptians, and bring back the Obelisk there?
I have to admit I don't agree, I personally think the morality of a crime doesn't depend upon a value judgement of the of the victim. Theft is theft even if you steal from thieves, and two wrongs as they say don't make a right. But I suppose some people need to assume the victims of imperialism had it coming, but of course they themselves don't.
Good luck with that, and keep your doors locked.